I pause, mouth open, not really knowing what to say. “I-I…”
He smiles. “I’m on my way to your house anyway. Your uncle and I are going to relive our old high school glories by shooting hoops in your driveway.” He raises a couple of gym bags bulging with balls and shoes.
How is it even possible for cool, insightful Victor and clueless, dorky Principal Roberts to exist in the same universe, let alone be friends?
I blink. “But we don’t even have a basketball hoop.”
“You do now.” He flashes his phone at me for confirmation. There’s a photo of our driveway with a shiny new basketball hoop hanging above the garage door. The text reads: IT’S ON. “I’ll let him know I’m bringing you home.” He dials the phone but keeps talking to me. “Damn shame about your scooter. That was a classic. Oh, hey, Vic. I’m on my way and I’m giving your niece a ride home, too. Okay. See you soon, buddy.”
I follow Mr. Roberts to his car, which is parked right by the office. I hope no one sees me leaving school with the principal. Talk about sketchy.
*
Victor’s out in the driveway as we pull in, gesturing proudly to his new installation. He’s wearing a faded T-shirt and an ugly pair of sweats. I really can’t bear to see my idol reduced to this level of mortal humiliation, so I leave them to do their thing while I head upstairs into the house.
First order of business is to find a place to stash Miss Peters’s samples. Hiding things in plain sight was easier before Victor showed up. I could always just tell Rachel it’s one of my experiments and she wouldn’t ask any more questions, but I can’t take the chance that Victor won’t recognize DNA samples.
I rummage through the frozen food. Popsicles? No, Rachel eats those sometimes. Buffalo wings, potpies, those get eaten pretty regularly, too. Hmmmm … I dig out a tattered bag of frozen peas from the very back. Neither Rachel nor I like peas. We never eat them. But Rachel’s idea of the perfect ice pack is a bag of frozen peas, so there’s always at least one in the freezer.
I lay the bag on the counter with the seam side up. Lifting the seam, I carefully slit open the bag a few inches along the underside. I dump out some of the peas and slip the small box into the bag, then fold the flap of the seam back to hide the slit and stash the bag in the very back of the refrigerator.
I step back and give the freezer a discerning look. As long as Victor doesn’t love peas, Miss Peters’s samples should be safe.
23
Tracking Internet activity is one of the easiest forms of forensic surveillance. Every mouse click and key press can be traced by a computer specialist.
—VICTOR FLEMMING
Rachel is already at work and Lysa and Spam are allowed to come over anytime, but getting the forbidden Journey past Victor could be a problem.
I finish my homework around five-thirty and head downstairs. Victor and Principal Roberts are collapsed around the kitchen table guzzling neon sports drinks.
Sweat streams down Victor’s neck and his T-shirt clings to his torso in damp patches. “Man, I’m at the gym four days a week, but you killed it out there,” he gasps. “Who do you play with to stay in that kind of shape?”
Mr. Roberts is damp, too, but he appears less exhausted than Victor. He blots his forehead with a small towel. “It’s high school, those guys can play for days,” he says. “Seriously, our team went all-state last year. I try to hang out with them once or twice a week.” He grins as I enter. “Hey, there’s the little lady. Grab a seat.”
I try not to think about the fact that my high school principal is in our house and just focus on how long I’ve known him … basically, since I started kindergarten. He called me “little lady” back then, too.
I slip into my chair and curl my foot up under me. “Should I even ask who won?”
“No,” Victor says. He slips off his shoes and pretends like he’s going to toss one at Principal Roberts. “This guy here totally humiliated me. It was like being time-warped back to high school.”
“Hey, wasn’t me dishing out the humiliation back then. It was Chuckles. And, if you recall, he smoked both of us.”
Victor snorts. “I saw him yesterday. He’s the same pompous bag of crap he always was.” Victor glances at me. “Sorry, you didn’t hear that.”
I shrug. “No worries.” He must mean Chief Culson, whose real name happens to be Charles.
Victor stuffs the basketball shoes into the gym bag and nudges it toward Roberts with his toe. “Thanks for the loan of the shoes, that was fun.”
Principal Roberts nudges the bag back to Victor. “Keep them here, at least until you leave. Maybe we’ll have the chance to do it again. They’re my old pair anyway.”